the penultimate debate

Tonight we had the “final” leaders debate, which of course is the final televised debate before the really important debate when the British public step forward with their voice – and it was unsurprisingly a clear win for Cameron, closely followed by Clegg with Brown a dead third.

What interests me is that after 15 years of hearing about ‘the nasty party’ all three leaders were portraying their parties in the voice of ‘the nasty party’, tough on crime, immigration, tax-dodging, anti-europe – they were all at it, they couldn’t be tougher, it was like watching 3 lads in the street after a drunken night out: all sizing each other up before a fight, but all playing more mouth than trousers.

Whatever happened to the liberal Tory big society, the pro euro cannabis friendly Liberals, or the entirely laissezfaire attitude of the Labour party to immigration, crime, schooling, public spending… They talked tough, and the people liked it – it’s very strange that our society which for 95% of the time seems to be fundamentally liberal and open to cultures new and old battens down the hatches during an election preferring to hear tough messages from all the parties rather than hearing the progressive voice that they bask in for most of the rest of the year. The voting public can be described as nothing other than fickle.

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